Rock Bottom Hits The Beach: East Coast Surfing Championship Recap!
Scratch was down at the East Coast Surfing Championship this weekend catching all the action! If you couldn’t be there, don’t worry, I’ll get you caught up on all the action!
We started out early on Saturday and were lucky enough to catch the 5k marathon! The shortest times were Dannel Jeriff at 26:29 for men, Hollie Heimer at 30:45 for women, and Darrin Snyder at 22:11 for wheelchair. Check out the rest of the times here! We love our runners here at the Cave so we loved being able to cheer them on!
We caught some of the 2-on-2 beach volleyball and flag football. Look at those ladies go!
We caught some of the final heats of surfing down at 2nd street, and were lucky enough to grab a close spot to watch the skimboarding finals.
Then on Sunday, were cheered on the racers in the King Of The Surf Fitness Challenge. Watching them swim, run, crawl, lunge, and do burpee after burpee made Scratch here feel super flabby.
It was then onto the surfing finals. As the crowd gathered, the pool of surfers got smaller and smaller until finally winner were announced! Patrick Gudauskas of California edged out Brazil’s Deivid Silva won in the pro category and 17-year-old Joshua Moniz from Hawaii won in the amateur. The Virginia Pilot reports,
“Gudauskas, 27, got his winning scores on his first two waves, sitting back for the remainder of the heat as the northeast wind swell started to die. The tactic almost failed him, as he barely edged Brazil’s Deivid Silva, 12.67 to 12.63.
Silva banged out one of the best rides of the heat with less than a minute remaining, forcing the judges to go to the replay to score it. Silva needed 6.68 to win, a 6.67 to tie, but got a 6.63.
‘I figured if I could get my two scores early that it could be all I needed,’ Gudauskas said. ‘The tide seemed to peak in the semifinals and as it was pulling out it was pulling down the waves.
‘I was kind of laughing while I was out there because it looked like it would pay off. Then Silva gets that wave at the end and…'”
Justin Quintal, 23, of Newport Beach, Fla. won the longboard competition just three weeks after winning the division at the U.S. Open. South Carolinian Emory McClary won the women’s title and $2,000, edging Chelsea Roett, who won the women’s amateur division.
I’ll be back later in the week with more info and great pics, but until then, check out this recap of the final day of surfing from Van’s!